


Rather Sail Away

by Rozarka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-16
Updated: 2006-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a beautiful autumn day by the Hogwarts lake, Andromeda learns to know Ted Tonks better over trout angling, Simon & Garfunkel and a driftwood fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rather Sail Away

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday fic for Muridae. <3

 

It's mid-October in her sixth year, one of those bright, woodsmoke-smelling autumn days that seem to cling defiantly to the residual warmth of summer, when she speaks to him for the first time. Or when she has a real conversation with him alone for the first time, at any rate. Of course she's addressed him in class before, or said hello in passing when they've met, alone or with friends of their respective houses. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are all right, that way; they're not drama queens like the other two houses; they get along perfectly well unless there is rational cause not to do so.

That afternoon, as she sits reading with her back against the trunk of a gnarled lakeside birch, cradled within its roots, Ted Tonks comes down the winding path to the shore, a whistle preceding him. It's a song she's never heard before, maybe a Muggle tune, and the sad-cheerful lilt of it makes her smile. When she sees who it is, her heartbeat picks up a little, because she finds Ted rather nice in a way she's not admitted to anyone, since there really is no point -- it would only lead to tears and trouble for her to get up to anything with anyone like him. He's carrying a worn canvas bag over his shoulder, and something that she recognizes as a fishing rod, from a book she's borrowed from the library. She can see under the bottom edge of his robes that he's wearing Muggle-style clothes beneath them, dark blue jeans and soft-soled, lace-up shoes. He's a bit of a slob, Ted, and one shoelace is coming undone as he walks.

Andromeda doesn't move or reveal herself, just leans her head back against the tree trunk and watches quietly, half-lidded, as he puts down the bag, then proceeds to take out and open a flat box that flashes metal and colours. He peers into it, brushing his long fringe out of his eyes, finally choosing a small object like an amulet that glints blue and silver in the black of its feathers. She tries to remember the terminology from the chapter she read. A fishing fly. Her gaze is drawn to his fingers next, long, rapid and clever, angling the line of the slender rod.

With a click, he loosens something on the metal wheel attached to the base of the rod, then very calmly, all grace and no visible force, leads the rod slightly to his back and brings it forwards, only the smooth whip-sound of the line flying out suggesting the strength of the movement.

"You know," he says without turning, "it's really not wise to sit behind someone who's angling and not reveal that you're there. If I hadn't noticed and were clumsy, the fly's hooks might have caught on you."

She puts down her book and gets to her feet. "I just ... it was just interesting to watch you do all that," she explains haltingly, her cheeks warm from being caught looking. "I've never seen someone fish before."

He throws her a look over his shoulder. His eyes show mild astonishment. "Never?"

"I _have_ read about it," she adds hastily, feeling like she's defending herself.

He smiles then. "Of course. Ravenclaw."

She shrugs. "I'm not actually extremely bookish," she confesses. "I just like to think about things, and learn." To tell the truth, she thinks the Sorting Hat, once it determined her to be not-Slytherin, placed her in Ravenclaw as a compromise, because she's an in-between in her natural abilities as in most other ways, and Ravenclaw is the only alternative to Slytherin that wouldn't enrage her whole family. She's the sister in the middle, the agreeably-tempered one, the brown-haired child balanced between Bella's darkness and Cissy's light. Brownielocks, Bella often calls her with a fond smirk on her red mouth, although lately Andromeda feels that the smirk is more patronising than affectionate.

Ted seems to have dropped the conversation right where it started, and maybe the polite thing to do would be to return to her book and leave him alone, but something keeps her hovering at his side. He looks so ... content, yet eager, his gaze focussed and searching the surface of the water, as though he can read it like a book and figure out what's going on below it.

"Wizards don't need to fish, do they?" she offers as a tentative provocation. "We get our food in far more convenient ways."

"Yeah, house-elves and magic," he murmurs with a twitch of his mouth. "I wonder if house-elves ever go fishing. Bet it would do them good."

She has no ready reply for that. Something about the way he stresses 'house-elves' sounds odd to her, or off, making her uncertain. "You've no need to do it either," she says instead. "You're good at magic. And there's no shortage of food at Hogwarts."

He grins then, as he starts spooling the line back, an intriguing flash of white in his tanned face. He's all brown, she's noticed before, same as her. Brown eyes, brown hair, that tan warmth to his skin. But where she is golden brown and honey colours, he's even dark earthy shades, although his base skin tone is paler and more sallow than hers.

"What are you smiling at?" she demands to know. "Did I say something stupid?"

"No, you didn't, Ravenclaw girl. It's just a different world, that's all. This," he says, nodding at the fly skimming the surface of the lake in short flashing jumps, "is relaxation. Fun that you can't have with a wand."

"Really?" She looks at him doubtfully. With the fly spooled back to the tip of the rod, he repeats the careful, tense grace of the throw. "But if you ... catch a fish. Then you kill it and eat it?" 

"Sure. Lake trout that you've caught yourself, roasted over a driftwood fire. There's nothing that beats the taste."

"How did you learn?" she inquires. "I mean, fishing?"

"I grew up in Scarborough, on the coast. My Dad used to bring me along, starting when I was about this tall." He indicates a very small height with his hand.

"Oh." It's like flying, or Quidditch, she supposes. They start teaching the children when they're little.

They fall silent, and after a while he's whistling again, that sweet tune from before. She tilts her head, listening intently. Like most nice melodies it is really quite simple. She picks it up fast, but resists the temptation to hum along, shy to let him hear.

"That's a lovely song."

"Yeah. It's a Simon and Garfunkel tune. I kept playing their last album all summer, so it got stuck in my head."

'Simon and Garfunkel.' 'Album'. She frowns. Those must be Muggle terms, but she can't remember them from her book. But she doesn't ask, dreading that he'd think her ignorant.

"It's all right. It's not anyone you would have heard about, but they're huge. Well, were. They split up recently. Damned shame."

"Who were huge?"

"Simon and Garfunkel." He grins. "Well, Paul Simon is actually tiny."

"So they're singers?"

"Yeah. That song," he says, "it's called 'El Condor Pasa'."

"Spanish? The condor ... passes?" she guesses.

"Yeah, I suppose. Or, the condor flies over; something like that. It's a Peruvian folk tune, but Simon's put English words to it." 

She stares at him. He might as well be talking a foreign language, and not Spanish, either, but she likes his eagerness. "You know him? Simon?"

When he laughs this time, she really knows she's said something stupid, and she blushes hotly. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm an idiot."

But his expression isn't saying that at all. "No, it's just that you've got a good point, actually. We keep talking about rock stars as if they were our best mates, you know, that fake familiarity."

"I really _don't_ know," she sighs, and he laughs again, but in such a friendly way that she has to laugh along with him.

He's been casting the fly steadily, a hypnotic rhythm to the pattern -- throw, wait a minute, spool back. Throw, wait a minute, spool back. She can see perhaps how it would be relaxing. Or boring. Surely not every Muggle finds it entertaining, she ponders. She watches as he regards the fly with a frown, then eases it off the line and opens the box again. And Ted may be a bit of a slob about many things, but this is one thing that he keeps in perfect order. Her eyes widen at all the beautiful combinations of feathers and colours. Before she can stop herself, she points at one.

"How pretty, the gold and blue."

"I made that one myself. Strands from a pheasant's breast feather and kingfisher's wing feather, tied with silver ribbon." His voice caresses the words with a reverence as though he were Ollivander speaking about a wand. "It's much better for rainy weather or murkier water, though. It's too bright for a sunny day, better to try something more subtle."

"Try it anyway," she suggests, shooting him a smile. "I've got a hunch."

He shakes his head but, with that easy good-will she senses in him, takes the fly out and ties it to the line. He leads the rod back again. Throw, wait a minute, spool back. Throw ... He whistles, and she grins because she can tell that he's not aware that he's doing so. 

"Would you teach me the song? The words?" she ventures.

He shrugs. "Sure. My singing voice isn't all that, though. I'm not that great at carrying a tune."

"Just tell me the words," she suggests. "I've already learnt the melody from your whistling."

He tells her, and the words are beautiful too, so simple and intense that they tug on her soul. She sings a few lines back to him -- _away, I'd rather sail away_ \-- and her voice quakes as her eyes fill. She breaks off. He's watching her, his eyes soft yet alert.

"It's all right. Kind of sad, isn't it? It's about longing, I think. Yearning."

It makes her heart skip a beat again, the way he says the word in his matter-of-fact, quiet voice. _Yearning_. She sniffles once and wipes at her eyes, then laughs as she peers at him over her fingers. "I'm not usually that sappy."

"It's all right," he repeats, and it's him looking unsure now, but in the next moment he whoops quietly with excitement. "Ah, look at that."

The rod has a slender taut bow to it as something tugs at the line below the surface. She stands quite forgotten for a while as Ted spools in and slackens the line again, spools in and slackens, coaxing the struggling shadow underwater closer to its fate. Andromeda watches, torn. She wants Ted to get his trout, and roast it over a driftwood fire. She also wants the trout to get away.

But there it comes, among the reeds in the shallows, a silvery shade twisting and glimmering, and Ted has a net ready that he catches it in, and a heavy, slim stone that renders it quiet in a flash and a fall of his arm, between one heartbeat and the next.

He catches her brief wince, the hand to her mouth, and meets her gaze as he straightens up.

"The trout that we're served on Hogwarts' dinner tables swam in the lake once too," he states, his voice as gentle as the message is blunt. 

"I know." She's only shocked, not horrified. He was quick, efficient, his eyes hard yet regretful; he took no pleasure in ending the trout's sinuous aliveness. 

He grins at her then, seeming to understand her lack of censure. "Want to help me gather driftwood? The laboursome, Muggle way? Or, heck, use a charm or two if you prefer."

They gather weathered sticks and twigs from the shore, enough for a small fire that she lights with her wand. Ted holds the trout by the gills in the water, opens it with a sharp blade and washes out the blood and entrails, then threads two supple birch twigs through it and lays it in the fire, the twig ends supported over a stone.

Her mouth waters first at the smoky smell, then at the taste when he cuts off flakes from the charred black fish with his knife, the cooked flesh pearl-and-coral on the inside. She eats carefully, breathing in hollow-cheeked puffs to cool the scorching mouthfuls. 

While they eat, she asks again about the words to the song, and he repeats them carefully, until she knows she'll remember. And it's like the world's quietly metamorphosed around her, sitting with this nice, brown-haired young wizard-fisherman, savouring the simplest of meals, learning the words to a lovely Muggle tune. How strange, she thinks, even as she enjoys it; the strangeness, the change. How nice he is, how _nice_.

"If you ever happen to be near Scarborough in your holidays," Ted offers, tossing his fringe from his eyes with sudden awkwardness, "come and see me and I'll play the album for you. They've got loads of great songs." He gives a little grin. "They've even got one about going to Scarborough."

Her chewing slows for a moment. She nods politely, even as she feels how much she really would love to sit with Ted in his room and listen to his album, because the idea seems to come surrounded by such insurmountable walls that she has no idea how they would manage to get to it. It's just not as simple as going to Scarborough.

She ties up his shoelaces neatly before they leave -- kneeling and using her fingers, not her wand -- which seems to amuse and bemuse him, but she just wants to do something nice for him in return, that's all.

Later, that night, as she gets ready for bed in her dormitory, she hums the song softly under her breath so that no one will ask her what sort of tune it is, and thinks of Ted's earth-brown eyes and his straight brown hair and his sudden smile and his whistling, and the look on his face when he watched the surface and when he caught the trout and when he offered her the first taste of it from the blade of his knife. 

And the soft knowing in his gaze when he said, _'It's about longing, I think. Yearning'_.

She draws the bed curtains closed and drifts to sleep with the words gliding over her mind, like a condor's shadow, like a vast distant view towards freedom.

_I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail.  
Yes I would.  
If I could,  
I surely would.  
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.  
Yes I would.  
If I only could,  
I surely would._

_Away, I'd rather sail away,  
like a swan that's here and gone.  
A man gets tied up to the ground,  
he gives the world  
its saddest sound,  
its saddest sound._

_I'd rather be a forest than a street.  
Yes I would.  
If I could,  
I surely would._

_I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet.  
Yes I would.  
If I only could,  
I surely would._

-end-


End file.
